As is well known, modern ultrasonic diagnostic systems are large, complex instruments. Today's premium ultrasound systems, while mounted in carts for portability, continue to weigh several hundred pounds. In the past, ultrasound systems such as the ADR 4000 ultrasound system produced by SonoSite, Inc., assignee of the present invention, were smaller, desktop units about the size of a personal computer. However, such instruments lacked many of the advanced features of today's premium ultrasound systems such as color Doppler imaging and three dimensional display capabilities. As ultrasound systems have become more sophisticated they have also become bulkier.
However, with the ever increasing density of digital electronics, it is now possible to foresee a time when ultrasound systems will be able to be miniaturized to a size even smaller than their much earlier ancestors. The physician is accustomed to working with a hand held ultrasonic scanhead that is about the size of an electric razor. It would be desirable, consistent with the familiar scanhead, to be able to compact the entire ultrasound system into a scanhead-sized unit. It would be further desirable for such an ultrasound instrument to retain as many of the features of today's sophisticated ultrasound systems as possible, such as speckle reduction, color Doppler and three dimensional imaging capabilities.
The tendency has been the smaller systems also lose attributes of their larger, stationary cousins due to limitations in space and power availability, the same factors that increase portability. An inverse relation exists between size and feature set. The use of digital beamformers and digital signal processing has allowed the expansion of capabilities of the smaller, more portable ultrasound systems relative to their predecessors. Recent releases of product like the SonoSite 180 have demonstrated the ability of manufacturers to reduce the size and weight of an ultrasound system while still delivering acceptable performance. As technology improves in both digital signal processing and power management, there remains a need for providing a hand held or portable ultrasound system that delivers acceptable performance characteristics, and at the same time is easy to use. There also remains a need for providing a method of being able to reduce costs to the users of ultrasound systems by providing an affordable and easily obtainable upgrade path to such user friendly ultrasound systems, both for hardware elements, and software.